Grease Skids: Reduce Spending Bill Amendments, Ryan Proposes

Morning Coffee is a robust blend of links to news around the Internet concerning the Naval Air Station Patuxent River economic community. The opinions expressed here do not reflect opinions of the Leader’s owners or staff.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is looking to tighten leadership’s grip on the appropriations process by blocking amendments that could sink spending bills. Rep. Ryan and the GOP leadership expect most amendments will still be permitted and only so-called poison pill proposals will be blocked, Politico reports. The move, which has not yet been finalized, comes on the heels of a massive fight over LGBT rights that ultimately sank the energy and water spending bill a couple of weeks ago.

Buzzed off: For the second time in a month, Chinese jets buzzed a US aircraft, this time in the East China Sea. China complained that US jets are flying too close to its borders; the US maintains that the aircraft was over international waters, reports The Washington Post. On Sunday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry warned China not to consider declaring an Air Defense Identification Zone over the South China Sea, as it did over the East China Sea in 2013. He said such a move would be a “provocative and destabilizing act.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the US Congress on Wednesday that the world’s two largest democracies can anchor stability and prosperity from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, The Washington Post reported. He also praised Congress for “refusing to reward” those who preach and practice terrorism. Although Prime Minister Modi avoided direct mention of Pakistan, he was alluding to lawmakers recently blocking a proposed, US-subsided sale of F-16 fighter jets to India’s arch-rival. The US and Indian militaries conduct more drills with each other than with any other nation.

It has gotten much less profitable to steal millions of payment-card numbers and sell them to fraudsters, says an analysis by The Atlantic. According to the cybersecurity firm Intel Security, the price of a stolen payment-card record has dropped from $25 in 2011 to $6 in 2016. “We’re living through an historic glut of stolen data,” explains Brian Krebs, who writes the blog Krebs on Security. “More supply drives the price way down, and there’s so much data for sale, we’re sort of having a shortage of buyers at this point.”

Drone buddies: While drone-on-drone fights are still thought of in the future tense (which isn’t to say forces aren’t preparing for them) drone-to-drone cooperation is here now – in the form of swarming, for instance, Defense Systems reports.  With the Navy deploying unmanned vehicles far from operators in the air, on the ground, and under water, UAVs will need fuel and data updates. The Office of Naval Research has proposed a potential solution – let other drones take care of it.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterates his opposition to planned F-35 purchase, criticizing his political predecessors for leaving him “a mess we are going to fix. … They clung to an aircraft [the F-35] that does not work and is far from working,” he said. Prime Minster Trudeau says the aircraft doesn’t fit Canada’s needs and is too expensive, Defense News reports.

There’s better news for the F-35 from the Netherlands. Having crossed the Atlantic from NAS Patuxent River in Maryland, escorted by two Royal Netherlands Air Force McDonnell Douglas KDC-10 tankers, the F-35 Lightning IIs are giving residents near Leeuwarden and Volkel air bases an insight into the difference in noise levels between the fighters, FlightGlobal says. Dutch Defense Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert pledged to arrange “experience flights,” followed by a questionnaire for the public to rate the F-35 and F-16 while they performed identical patterns. Residents did not rate the noise level produced by the F-35 as significantly worse than the country’s aging F-16s.

The Air Force is looking to expand collision-avoidance technology by re-directing F-16s on a crash course with the ground to avert a crash, Scout Warrior reports. Auto-Ground Collision Avoidance System, now installed on digital F-16 fighters, uses computer algorithms to take over an aircraft’s flight trajectory and change a potential collision course with the ground or nearby terrain. A recent Air National Guard mid-air collision of two F-16s in South Carolina underscores the service’s interest in rapidly expanding promising technology to prevent air-to-air crashes as well as air-to-ground incidents. (with video)

Leonardo-Finmeccanica’s Airborne and Space Systems has secured another customer for its new Osprey X-band active electronically scanned array surveillance radar after being selected to meet the maritime search radar requirement for the US Navy’s MQ-8C Fire Scout rotary-wing unmanned aircraft system, IHS Jane’s 360 reports. The integration of a non-developmental maritime search radar on the MQ-8C is intended to provide increased situational awareness and targeting information in support of surface units.

The Navy’s elite flight team announced they have canceled two more June appearances while they take an operational pause, Navy Times reports. In the wake of the June 2 crash that killed No. 6 pilot, Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss, the Blue Angels will miss the Syracuse International Air Show in New York on June 11 and 12 and the Vectren Dayton Air Show in Ohio on June 18 and 19. To fill in, the Navy has offered up its Tactical Demonstration Team to perform in place of the Blue Angels.